Marriage “From the Outside Looking In”

So yesterday my sister Aly and my new brother Tim got married! What an exciting time for not only them but the people that surround them as they embark on this new adventure together. God has been the center of their relationship before their marriage and I imagine that He will be the center of their marriage as well. I decided to do a post about marriage because I wanted to give everyone an idea of what marriage should look like, and what the Bible tells us about it.

Let’s start at the beginning, “The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him”” Genesis 2:18. So here we see that God wants someone for the man, so what does he do to fulfill his wishes? “Then the LORD made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.” Genesis 2:22. Now we see that God makes another human from the man, but this human is different, this human is a woman (Genesis 2:23). From these verses we can see that the idea of marriage came straight from God, there was no thought from the man or the woman. My question is this, why do so many marriages fail? The answer is the same answer that I have been finding to so many of my questions, it is simple answer. We are human, we live in a world consumed by sin, we have failed, how can we expect a covenant designed by God to work without God and in a world filled with sin… We can’t there is no way to make it through a marriage without God. So what does God say about marriages, what are his instructions to us?

The New Testament is what God has given us to guide us in our new lives, after Christ sacrificed his life for us. So what does the New Testament say about marriage? I want to focus on what it says in Ephesians 5. “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior.” Ephesians 5:22-23 (emphasis mine). “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” Ephesians 5:25 (emphasis mine). Here we see a clear picture of what is expected of a couple, that the wife listen and submit to the husband and in return the husband must love his wife. So what does this mean? So often I hear from people that they think this is a sexist thing to say, but in fact it is not. God created two separate beings as we can see from Genesis 2, he did not intend for both man and woman to have the same functions/roles. The goal of the writer here is to define these two separate roles that have been given to us. Submit does not mean that you are now a slave to your husband, it means that you should trust your husband to know what he is doing and trust that he is being lead by the Lord. The next part is a simple idea, husbands must love their wives. This idea is simple, but it has a broad meaning. When the Bible says love it is not talking about the superficial love that the world has created, no it is talking about love on the scale that God has created. It is talking about a sacrificial love. Finally, because the woman submits to the man he must be Christ centered so he can lead his family in a way pleasing to God.

So now to get back to my Title “Marriage “From the Outside Looking In”” I chose this title for two reasons. One, I am not married so I have no idea what a personal marriage is. Two, I was writing about what a marriage should look like. I say should, because we are not perfect beings and there will be struggles in everything we do, including marriages, but there is hope in Jesus Christ our Savior, and we can be forgiven for our mistakes.

Finally, I want to say that I am extremely proud of Alyson & Tim Neufeld, they have demonstrated what a relationship can look like if it is Christ centered, not saying that they didn’t argue before their marriage, but that they could always come out of an argument knowing more about each other and about their relationship with God. I am extremely excited to see what God will do through them and through their marriage, I will pray for them and support them with kind, encouraging and loving words, as they start this new chapter in their life, I love you guys and will always be here for you!